GPS provides a solution that allows a GPS-enabled device to calculate its location based on location measurements from various satellites' perspective. Once computed, this location can be shared with other agent-based applications to determine if the device is eligible to participate inside a Region of Interest (ROI), for example as described in the Applicant's co-pending patent application Ser. No. 12/629,926, filed Dec. 3, 2009, titled System and Method for Migrating Agents Between Mobile Devices, the entire contents of which are incorporated herein by reference.
Using GPS exclusively to determine the location of a device has some problems. The location calculation can be spoofed by the device or incorrectly calibrated because of GPS signal interference leading to location misrepresentations (intentional or unintentional). In some circumstances, there can be a security risk presented by granting ROI participation rights for agents outside of the ROI.
One alternative to using GPS is to use WiFi to track the location of a device. In this case, the device being tracked is pre-configured with knowledge of all wifi access points and the fixed position of each wifi access point. The device being tracked reports the signal strength of all visible access points to another server in order for the server to compute its location. The preconfiguration requirement of the device can be cumbersome and can lack flexibility.
What is required is a system and method for validating a location of a device.